Here’s a fun fact. Years ago, before I actually started the nursery, I spent a period of time collecting and selling seeds. I now view that as an endeavor that was perhaps not viable on its own, but could be a good complement to the nursery for certain items.

Over the years my opportunities to collect more seeds fizzled out, and eventually I had to take the seed list off the web site rather than sell seed that was getting old and may not be viable. However I am now compelled to resume seed sales again. The main catalyst for this was that several large eucalypts came down last winter in the snow, which were all loaded with seed that I would not have been able to reach otherwise. But even before that happened I had an interest in getting back into seed sales and had started collecting a few things. I am now ready to go with all the seed pre-packaged, which helps me to be more organized.

So we’re getting off to a modest start, with a relatively small list for now. When I really get going with this I will add the seed list to the web site, but for now I’m posting it here on the blog only.

The prices listed are, of course, per packet. These are small packets of seeds, containing at least 30-40 seeds except as noted. Of course for things with tiny seeds like Callistemon there are a lot more seeds than that. All of the seed was locally collected in western Washington by me personally, within the last six months (as of this writing), and has been properly kept in cold storage to maintain viability.

To order, print off the order form and mail it with payment to The Desert Northwest, PO Box 3475, Sequim, WA 98382. Shipping for seeds is free for domestic (USA) orders of $20 or greater; orders under $20 and all international orders please add $3 for shipping.

A couple items deserve special mention. Banksia canei is one of the hardiest Banksias, called “mountain Banksia” and occurring in subalpine regions in the wild. It is almost never seen in cultivation, but I have a few in the greenhouse that I grew from seed 11 years ago, that have now flowered and set seed. The flowers are yellow and they are very nice. Eucalyptus praecox is interesting because it has lived through all the cold winters in Olympia (remarkably, considering it is not terribly cold where this thing grows in nature) but is virtually unheard of in gardens. Older references list it as a subspecies of E. mannifera. It is a pretty medium sized tree (to 50′ or so) with a smooth trunk.

Hopefully I’ll be able to continue adding to this list as time goes on!

Since you don’t have enough plants, we are open for business this Friday and Saturday, June 23 and 24, from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm. You can find directions to our nursery here (please pardon last year’s open house dates still up there).

We still have all kinds of Grevilleas, Callistemons, Ozothamnuses, Leptospermums, Olearias, Podocarpuses, Cupressuses, Arctostaphyloses, Cistuses, Quercuses, Delospermas, hardy cacti, and all the usual suspects; but this time I’m just going to highlight one plant, which (as you will have guessed) is Grevillea x ‘Neil Bell’. If you don’t have this Grevillea, you are missing out. It is a large and fast-growing evergreen shrub to 8′ x 8′ with BIG orange-red flowers. It blooms for months, including most of the winter, and hummingbirds flock to it. Compared to the usual form of G. victoriae, the leaves are a bit smaller, the flowers are larger and more numerous, it is somewhat more deer resistant, it grows a bit faster, and (importantly) it is much more drought tolerant. It is rock-solid hardy, having breezed through 5 degrees F unharmed in the Portland area.

As for the history of this plant, Grevillea x ‘Neil Bell’ originated as a chance seedling at Xera Plants, a Portland area nursery, and was selected by owner Paul Bonine who recognized its superior qualities. It almost certainly has some of G. victoriae in its ancestry, but it’s hard to guess what else it might have crossed with—possibly another hybrid Grevillea cultivar. Paul named it for Neil Bell, who manages the trial gardens at the North Willamette Experiment Station south of Portland, where various genera of plants have been under evaluation to observe their long-term performance in the Pacific Northwest (see this web site). Our cuttings come from the garden of Mike Lee, formerly the owner of Colvos Creek Nursery. We’re making this highly desirable and easily grown yet exotic shrub available for just $14 each in the 4” pot size.

Lots of newly potted little plants are coming along, so come on out and see what else is growing! When you visit our nursery you are certain to find rare and interesting plants none of your neighbors have. And it promises to be a nice weekend with beautiful weather to visit the Olympic Peninsula and hike, or even hit the beach. We hope to see you this weekend!

Here are a couple photos of ‘Neil Bell’… the plant not the person. Unfortunately it was not quite in peak bloom at the time of this photo; also, this plant has been trimmed back repeatedly to keep it out of the path.

Sometimes we wait until the last minute to announce important events around here, and we didn’t want to disappoint anyone this time around by being inconsistent. So come one, come all to our first open house of the year this weekend. As usual we’re making it a Friday and Saturday event with the hours being 9:30 to 5:30. It promises to be a beautiful weekend too! Directions may be found here: (And if you see any 2016 dates on that page, disregard them because we’re in the process of fixing that this weekend.)

Another thing we can disregard is that old fashioned “cash or check only” stuff. We have now finally moved into the 21st century with credit card payment being available. Some people around here thought they would never see that happen. We won’t say who.

So how is the nursery looking these days, you might be wondering? Well what usually happens is that things start off nicely in early spring, but then everything goes off the rails as soon as I start going around to all these regional plant sales and being away from the nursery. This year things did not start off so great because it was frigidly cold right into the second week of March. As announced earlier, I cut back on those sales, but some other commitments came up which also used up a good deal of time. So the nursery as usual doesn’t look perfect, though it has received some needed attention in the last couple weeks. So it’s still, shall we say, navigable.

On the positive side, I hit it really hard early this spring with potting up the new and cool stuff (even in the cold early on). So the result of that is, there are TONS OF PLANTS out there, especially in the smaller sizes. This is not one of those years where I’m feeling low on nursery stock. And of course, half of the new stuff isn’t listed on the web site by now, since I haven’t had time get that updated lately. We’ll get there.

So for now we’ll just have to tell you about some of the cool new stuff, which may or may not be on the web site, but mostly not. To start with we have TONS of Olearias. I mean about every kind you could want right now. They are the perfect plants for the coast since they love cool weather and wind. They also make pretty flowers (two species being fragrant) and deer don’t eat them. I tried to sell them all last weekend at that Grays Harbor sale, but for some reason I still have plenty left over.

Also in the New Zealand department, some new Hebes are ready including ‘White Gem’, H. anomala, and the purple flowered ‘Purple Shamrock’ and ‘Autumn Glory’. A new crop of Carmichaelia australis is ready– this intriguing plant looks like a mass of growing green sticks, though ours are a bit leafy at the moment. Then we have a unique form of Muehelenbeckia complexa with much larger leaves than usual. It comes from Three Kings Island off the NZ coast, but is perfectly hardy. And finally if you’re in the market for a 1-gallon Corokia cotoneaster you need look no further than our nursery.

I just went through all the conifers and got them organized (have to admit I found a few things I thought were were sold out of). Nearly everything listed on our site is still out there, with a couple exceptions. Lagarostrobos franklinii and Chamaecyparis lawsoniana ‘Chilworth Silver’ are looking fine. Araucaria angustifolia is still available and a recently potted crop of Juniperus ‘Gold Cone’ is showing its yellow new growth. If you need a Fitzroya cupressoides (and who doesn’t?), you’d better hurry since we only have ten 1-gallons left!

In the Australian department, it’s pretty fun to watch plants like Leptospermum sericeum, L. humifusum, Callistemon viridiflorus and several others blooming in their little pots. They don’t always do that but I guess I struck just the right balance of how mean to be to them without making them die. Then we have a great looking crop of Lomatia fraseri, a rainforest-dwelling Protea relative that is totally hardy and has large white flowerheads. Some new (and returning) Grevilleas are in the pipeline, including ‘Neil Bell’ which are a bit on the small side but I think they are ready enough to sell. This one looks a lot like ‘Marshall Olbrich’ but with larger leaves and flowers, and improved vigor, drought resistance and frost-hardiness. It is a real winner!

In the western native department, 1 gallons of Arctostaphylos densiflora ‘Howard McMinn’ are still looking good. If you’re new to manzanita this is one of the most popular selections and easiest to grow. A lot of the newly potted stuff still isn’t ready yet, but here are a few things that are: Two new (to us) Ceanothus, ‘Italian Skies’ with masses of light blue flowers and ‘Joyce Coulter’, and older cultivar with mid-blue flowers and a spreading habit, that grows very quickly! We also have our native Penstemon fruticosus, and a Penstemon barrettiae hybrid (the other parent being unknown). And this is your chance to get a newly germinated Aesculus californica which look awesome.

Now to top off the list with a bunch of really random things. We haven’t carried the South African Buddleja loricata or B. salvifolia for years, but now they are back. Looking similar to B. loricata is B. araucana from Chile, which is also out there. In the Mediterranean department we may as well mention new crops of the extremely floriferous Cistus ‘Chelsea Bonnett’, along with Teucrium fruticans ‘Azureum’, Myrtus communis ‘Andy Van Helvengen’ (a cold hardy myrtle selection) and Quercus trojana, a Mediterranean oak. And finally, I bet you didn’t know we had Hypericum henryi from Vietnam, or Cinnamomum glanduliferum, a beautiful broadleaf evergreen tree that I can’t remember if it’s from China or Japan. (Better look that one up!) Anyway it’s impressively hardy with a rather subtropical look. And if all that stuff grows too large for you, we could still sell you a nice hairy Sempervivum like S. arachnoiderum x pittoni, or the fabulous S. ‘Witchery’. Well that was quite a paragraph. But now I’m done.

If you read that far, you have a feel for what kinds of plants to expect around here. Most of what’s on the web site is still available too in some form, though we may be down to low numbers. Anyway, we look forward to seeing you, whether it be this weekend at the open house, or at a later appointment or at one of the sales and events we participate in.

I’m a little late as usual, but I think we’ve finally sorted out what events we have planned for the season and when, so here they are. Not listed is the Sequim Garden Show, which was announced in the previous blog post and via e-mail, and has already passed us by. It was the third weekend of March and went pretty well as always. We thank those of you who came out to see us for that event.

As usual, a complete list of events we are participating in is followed by my commentary:

This weekend there is really way too much going on. First there is the RSBG Spring Plant Sale in Federal Way this Friday (tomorrow) and Saturday, which is the most important one since we will be there (ha ha). But there is also Hortlandia, the huge HPSO sale in Portland (Saturday-Sunday) which draws plant geeks from all over the Northwest, and the NARGS (Rock Garden Society) spring plant sale (Saturday only). I wish we could be at all three. So how is a plant nut to choose? Well I have the answer: Go to the RSBG sale Friday (first!), the NARGS sale Saturday, and Hortlandia Sunday (if your April plant budget isn’t exhausted by then). Problem solved. Fortunately, I’ve given you an entire half day of notice to plan all this out.

Our next event is the Grays Harbor Home and Garden Show in Elma, Coming up on May 20-21. This is a new event for us, but of course we like to try almost anything once. I’ll bring fewer manzanitas and succulents, and lots of plants that love the coast, like Olearia, Leptospermum and conifers. Despite our nursery name we actually sell an extensive range of plants that do great with high rainfall. Some of you may recall that I grew up in Olympia, and tested a lot of plants there that we still produce and sell. We thank John Kugen for connecting us with the organizer for this event.

The Salem Hardy Plant Society sale was the first we might have considered dropping, due to the travel distance/expense (and we didn’t do as well in 2016 as previous years). But this year they are moving to a new location closer to I-5 (Seabright Gardens). So we’re sticking with it, since the new venue may bring in more people, especially from the Portland area; and because if we drop it we’ll have no events in Oregon in 2017, which would be unfortunate. This is a great chance for you Portland folks who will miss us at Hortlandia to send in your special requests and take advantage of our expanded inventory, which is at its most diverse in late summer!

Now for the usual review of what are we not doing, and why? I feel like this is important just so people don’t wonder if we are out of business or dropped off the face of the earth or something. The big one of course is Hortlandia. After skipping it in 2015, we were back last year and it did about as well as usual. This year our main reason for skipping it is the schedule conflict with the RSBG sale (according to my notes, this was also an issue in 2015). The RSBG sale makes more sense for us in terms of travel expenses, less time away from the nursery, and seeing people who only come to that sale. We regret that we can’t be at Hortlandia and hope to return next year.

We missed a Heronswood sale on April 1st, and there will be another on May 13-14 we have decided not to attend, and leave a space open for someone else. The reason for this, as I noted on my January 5th blog post, is that we need to spend enough time at the nursery to stay on top of things here. I have come to realize that when I spend too much time away from the nursery in the spring, I start getting behind on projects to where things snowball out of control. So I’m trying not to let that happen this year (also the reason I haven’t been spending as much time online since March). You also have to consider that each plant sale doesn’t just “use up” the day(s) of the sale itself, but also basically an additional whole day required to prepare for it, and a couple hours unloading and putting away what doesn’t sell at the end. If I do three sales in April (as in last year) the amount of time consumed really adds up!

So with Heronswood sales in July and September we can still hope to be invited to, we thought it made sense to drop the spring events at Heronswood.

The Gig Harbor Garden Tour was pleasant and well managed. But we learned it is not the right venue for selling our products (no money lost, just time), so we are not participating this year. I highly recommend this event for anyone who wants to see some impressive and well-tended gardens. Many of the garden art vendors bring creative and beautiful pieces to this event as well.

And I think those are about all the changes from last year. Changes we made further back have been discussed in previous blog posts and can be read about by scrolling back to find them.

And yes, we did add one open house this year from the usual three. Well, sort of: technically we had four last year, only the last one, in late October, wasn’t announced until September. This year we managed to plan them all out in advance on dates that make sense, concluding that people aren’t thinking that much about planting by late October (even if they should be). If we can catch a few more people that way, that will be great; and at the rate I am potting stuff up there will be a ton of new plants available by summer. The mid-summer open house is the same weekend Fronderosa used to be, and although we can’t claim to be as diverse as Fronderosa, at least we might draw in some people who miss having an exciting plant shopping event in August. This will also be our first May open house in years and I think we can be ready enough.

Finally, we’re open to possibly adding another event or two anytime from about mid-June on. Let us know if you think of anything we should look into!

As usual my post has gotten quite long-winded, so thanks for reading. We look forward to seeing you at one, two, several, or all of these events! And of course if you can’t make it, there’s always mail-order.

That’s right, it’s that time of the year again—garden show and plant sale season! (But for some of us, when was it not?) I suppose we could say the season kicked off in February with the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, but the weather has been anything but springlike around here until just the last week or so. Perhaps, like me, you were wondering just earlier this month if winter was ever going to end or what.

So what better time than this weekend to head out to Sequim and visit us at the Sequim Garden Show? Especially considering a visit to Sequim on any other weekend is unlikely to coincide with a local garden show. Please have a look at their web site for directions and further information.

Are there any plants you want us to bring? You can just let me know and I’ll bring them to the show. You can even let me know on Saturday and I’ll bring them Sunday morning. The e-mail version of this newsletter comes with a handy list of the larger stock we have available, which is more up-to-date than the list of larger stock on the web site. We only live five minutes from this show so that’s no problem at all. This list does not include the mail-order plants, for which a reasonably up-to-date list is found on the web site. I’m happy to bring any of these plants for you too.

There are a number of other nursery vendors there as well. One of our favorites is Phocas Farms, a specialty vendor of hardy succulents (mostly Sedum and Sempervivum). Unlike most succulent growers, this one actually knows the exact names of everything they sell. And there are always more local nurseries. Some are here year after year, and others come and go so you never quite know who will show up.

So, yes, the show is only two days away, meaning this notice doesn’t leave a lot of time for advance planning. The story behind that is, this newsletter got put off because I was hoping to produce by now a full list of all the sales I would be participating in this year. I usually try to be prepared with that by early March or so. But it seems we have a few things that are still up in the air, including selecting from several conflicting options the third week of May, and sorting out our own open house dates to make sure they don’t conflict with anything else. So I’m giving up on getting it all worked out before this weekend. But I’ll make my best effort to post a complete list of our 2017 events on our blog by the end of March!

This concludes this relatively brief newsletter. If you can’t make it this weekend, we hope to see you another time. And please check our blog again for updates!

Can you believe it was 10 years ago that I started this blog? I’m not sure I can. Here’s a link to the very first blog post. You will see that it is very exciting (not). I think I just wanted to have something on there so people would not go to just a blank page, and I didn’t feel a lot of pressure to produce meaningful content right off the bat.

I have a total of 110 blog posts. That amounts to just shy of one per month, but there have been periods of more activity interspersed with some long breaks. This year I am going to attempt to be a little more frequent and consistent with the posts, but not unrealistically so. I’ll be happy if I manage to post twice per month, but maybe give myself a break if it’s a little less frequent during the very busy season.

So on this exciting occasion, let’s do some reflecting. A lot has happened in ten years. When I started this blog not a lot of people were on Facebook (including me). This blog was my outlet for information and connecting with plant people. Now that has all changed. But Facebook isn’t quite what it used to be either. I almost think separate social media platforms are needed for discussing plants and political banter. I’m glad I didn’t totally give up on my blog.

In ten years I feel like I have almost started learning how to run a nursery. (The nursery itself goes back to 2005.) From a financial standpoint the nursery continues to do slightly better every year. If I can meet some goals this year perhaps it will do a lot better. One likes to be optimistic! One of those goals is to transition to a complete online shopping cart. What’s holding me back, you might wonder? Well, it’s simply that there are many steps between assessing inventory on the ground to the finished product of a functional shopping cart. I need to count quantities, write descriptions, find photos, and more. Oh well, I will get there somehow. I believe in working hard but I am also quite meticulous. I have opted to keep putting it off rather than do a sloppy job of it. Other processes such as shipping, potting up, inventory management and so forth continue to be more streamlined, a word which makes this fact sound impressive.

Looking ahead in the nursery department, I did not get terribly far afield this year to collect cuttings. I did not go on any plant hunting trips or botanical exploration in natural areas, not even locally. But the propagation area is full, mostly of cuttings from friends’ local gardens, so there will still be a lot of great stuff for sale next year. Notably, we visited Mike Lee’s Arbor Heights Botanic Garden in West Seattle, which is really coming along nicely. If we’re lucky perhaps I’ll manage to post photos of that in the near future. Many cuttings from Mike are already rooting. We also returned to Hummingbird Hill Villa, about which I posted a year ago. We went the Saturday after Thanksgiving and Arctostaphylos ‘Austin Griffiths’ was already blooming! We thank the owners of these gardens for their generosity. (The funny thing is, nearly six weeks later I still haven’t quite finished processing the Hummingbird Hill cuttings. But they have been carefully stored and, remarkably, they still look fine. I continue to go through them as the chance allows and hope to finish tomorrow.)

Besides all these cuttings, I’m also hoping to increase our selection of seed-grown plants like Eucalyptus and Acacia this year–plants we haven’t offered a lot of in a while, but we should. And I’m also looking through some of the stuff we used to sell way back when the nursery started and asking, what can I propagate that we haven’t offered in a long time, that people would want to buy?

Also in the works, I am hoping to re-introduce seeds for sale. But it is going to be a rather humble beginning, as many of my sources back when we had more seeds are no longer available. Various plants/trees froze, and I haven’t done any collecting in the Southwest, or around Seattle. So this may not be a huge deal. But as the chance arises I’ll just continue to collect what I can. So far I have managed to collect about 15 species from plants like Eucalpytus, Callistemon and Leptospermum in quantity enough to sell. I’ll see what else I can come up with. Stay tuned for more news about this hopefully by February!

Finally, I’ll mention that I’m hoping I feel like I can afford to cut back on regional plant sales a bit this year. It’s tempting to try to fill every weekend with one event after the other, but I have to consider how much valuable nursery time I am missing, and how far behind I get in the spring (especially on potting up cuttings and seedlings) by not staying home as much as possible. I’ll be making some decisions about that soon, and I’m certainly not giving them all up. I have already reserved my usual booth at the Sequim Garden Show, which is coming up the third weekend of March.

How about this cold weather? I admit we view it as a bit of a hassle when it lasts this long. We have now had three separate “arctic blast” type events, which is an awful lot of them for one winter, and we still have a good deal more winter to go. Between everything being frozen and me being sick for that brief period after Christmas when we were above freezing, there have been periods where work has kind of come to a standstill. (That’s why the Hummingbird Hill cuttings aren’t done!) But when I can, besides sticking cuttings, I continue to clean up the first three greenhouses when we’re above freezing. I have also organized my bamboos, which needed doing, and cleaned out the shade house, and I have a big project going now with organizing pots. Winter stuff, we might say.

We did not get a lot of snow, which is good. No more than an inch fell at any one time, though with everything being frozen, there is still some out there now. “Snow is a good insulator,” the saying goes, but what they don’t tell you is that it’s hardly worth it when snow cover on the ground substantially drops the air temperature at night from what it otherwise would be. So we say no thanks to snow if we can avoid it. Our coldest temperature has been 20°F, which is annoying but it could have been much worse.

And, importantly for my personal sanity, the freezing weather is great for catching up on various projects indoors that have been neglected for too long. Spreadsheets about plant hardiness, organizing files, cleaning e-mail inboxes, cataloging photos, and the like. I have been about five years behind on listing all the plants pictured in the photos I have taken. But now I am catching up! I have to know where to find the photos of various plants on my hard drive if I am going to use them. The only unfortunate thing is it is just on a spreadsheet–If there were any fancy photo organizing programs when I started this 11 years ago, I did not know about them. Now I think that’s too big of a leap to make.

I suppose that’s all the news that’s fit to print, and then some! I’m sure most of my readers are looking forward to winter being over as much as I am, so we can all get on with planting! Here are a few random photos:

Nursery on December 6th.

Little plants all snug and warm in the greenhouse. Isn’t that cute?

An ice plant covered in ice. It seemed appropriate. Isn’t it an ice plant?

I’ll be producing the e-mail newsletter version of this tomorrow, but for now let’s make sure this actually gets up on my blog. As announced in the previous blog post, we’re having one final open day this year, which will be October 29th, a week from Saturday! Come on out! I’ll attempt to entice you with some nursery photos below.

But first, let’s talk about miracles. If you never believed in miracles, now you should. Because, after months and months – no, years – of pledging to update the plant list, and on multiple occasions making good progress on it but never managing to quite finish the job; I have actually, finally done it, for real! And that is nothing short of miraculous. Now you can go to http://www.desertnorthwest.com/catalog and actually see what we have, and not see what we don’t have. Imagine that! And that is a remarkable achievement.

Now, a few comments about the new catalog are necessary. First, you’ll notice that some photos and descriptions are still absent from the list. But I can fill those in over the winter. Although people increasingly rely on smartphones and google to find the plant information they need, I still think it is of value to produce our own content. So I’ll be working on that. I’m also considering some other changes to the appearance of the page to make it easier to read and more colorful. We’ll see what I decide to do. And yes, I will update the “featured plants” on the home page someday!

Second, you’ll notice a major change to our pricing and shipping policies. All shipping/handling costs are now included in the price for mail-order purchases, and a minimum order of $40 applies. We could call it “free shipping!” and be gimmicky, but in reality we have simply opted to absorb those costs by raising prices accordingly on mail-order sales. (I don’t know, maybe I should call it “free” anyway! Hmmm…) I’ll be writing another blog post soon elaborating on the reasons for these changes.

However, if you buy from us in person here at the nursery, our prices are unchanged from before (since the cost of shipping does not need to be covered in that case), and there is no minimum purchase. In fact, unlike a lot of mail-order nurseries, very few of our prices have budged since we opened the nursery in 2005, and those not by much.

We must also note that the format of the catalog has changed from category-based to strictly alphabetical. Honestly that was a major part of what was holding me back, as far as getting this update accomplished. I actually wrote the script of the web site myself long ago, and while I’m sure there are now easier ways to do this stuff, I felt like I need to get on top of this “the old fashioned way” first. Sort of a personal sanity issue, you might say. And I have finally had to admit that to do so, it is much easier if I only have to maintain a single alphabetical list with all descriptions and photos. Previously, as you may recall, I had an alphabetical list with the name only and cross-links to the plants with descriptions and photos listed under their respective categories, with separate pages for each category. Then within the categories were more cross-links for plants that belonged under more than one category, and plants known by more than one botanical name. What a mess. Anyway, I finally “bit the bullet” and opted for the easier A – Z only format. But even just to make that transition took a lot of time, and I had to write a new script for the new alphabetical page (now divided into eight pages) and copy all the plant names, descriptions and other information into it.

But, I still like the category-based format, so the categories are still noted in each plant description. I think they have value, both in terms of planning one’s garden, and when considering plant relations and adaptations. Hopefully someday we’ll get as far as an online shopping cart with multiple layers of categories possible. This A – Z list with categories noted under the plant names is, in my view, a step in that direction.

Then once I got all that done, I had to rewrite the order form, and the “Info/Terms” page to reflect the changes to ordering and shipping policy/pricing. And now it is time to write this newsletter and update the e-mail list before sending it. I’m not complaining; it’s just nice when I feel like people understand all that goes into this!

The list for larger plants – stuff we don’t ship – still isn’t done and current. I hope to attempt to do that early next week, so I’d say you should check the web site at http://www.desertnorthwest.com/local/retail.html about Wednesday or so and you’ll see our list of larger stock. The fact that I have completed the retail list gives me hope that this too will get done!

Some of the nursery highlights include a great selection of smaller-growing cold-hardy Opuntia cacti, and quite a few Olearias, Callistemon, Leptospermum and other stuff that you need. Araucaria angustifolia is back, along with Eucalyptus regnans, the world’s tallest non-coniferous tree! The selection of hardy Hebes is much better than it has been in a while, and lots more.

Did you know that you need a Leptospermum namadgiensis? I am convinced this plant is so tough it will grow about anywhere. It comes from one of the coldest parts of Australia and can handle single digit temperatures. It has bronzy new growth and always looks super year-round. It takes drought, wet, poor soil and the deer don’t eat it. But let’s get to some nursery photos already.

Here are those Leptospermum namadgiensis, don’t they look nice?

More stuff in the Australian section… heaps of Callistemons, Leptospermums, Drimys lanceolata, some very cute Ozothamnus coralloides, and more.

Grevillea and Banksia section, freshly cleaned up.

In the center of this photo we have a new Grevillea introduction we are calling ‘The Precious’. (I thought the Lord of the Rings would be a fun theme for Grevillea introductions.) It was a chance seedling, probably of ‘Poorinda Leane’, that popped up in my parents’ garden in Olympia. You can be among the first to try it! Then at left is Grevillea ‘Pink Pearl’ which we haven’t had in years (nine years maybe?), and a few Lomatia myricoides in the foreground.

Griselinia, Corokia, Carmichaelia australis (look that one up, it’s cool!), Hymenanthera and Olearia in the foreground, cactus table with hardy fuchsias underneath in the background.

This is Banksia integrifolia subsp. monticola flowering in the back of one of our stock houses. It is the largest Banksia in the wild, reaching a height of over 100′, and it is disjunct from the usual coastal form, occurring well inland at an altitude of 3,000 – 5,000′ in New South Wales. Sounds like just what you need, right? And we have them in 1 and 2 gallon pots only! I need to get those back on the mail-order list sometime.

Anyway, we’ll call that good for now. Thanks for reading! Remember if you can’t make it on the 29th, you can still e-mail for an appointment at anytime.